Full disclosure: I’m a dyed-in-the-wool duck hunter from the Midwest. Nothing makes me happier than a mud-stanky Lab’s tail beating out a 4/4 rhythm on my leg with the clouds overhead spitting sleet the size of pea coal. When I’m shivering in leaky old waders, I’m in my element. As Jimmy Dugan said best in the movie A League of Their Own: “It’s the hard that makes it good.” So the whole relaxed business of hunting Southern bobwhites never really stoked my fire. Must be an Upper Midwest thing.

Fact is, my compass scribes mostly north and west from my farm in rural Central Minnesota. When I dream of Heaven, it’s usually visions of bowed-up wings over a slough or some small grainfi_eld that might range from the Dakotas to specifi_c locales in Prairie Canada that I’ll never mention in print. It’s just how it is—you love the birds you know, and I never really wanted to know about quail because quail hunters don’t wear waders. They wear knickers—or whatever they’re called.

But enough about ducks and pants. This story’s about Elvis— the one who lives in Thomasville, Georgia. I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve got a thing for dogs, but not just any dogs. For me, it’s about personality over pedigree. I call them “meat dogs.” The ones without the titles and letters before or after their names. The little grinders you didn’t expect, all heart and all go, with a God given instinct you can’t help but take a shine to. Most of the great ones turn out great—despite our training shortcomings, anyway. They’re like the dirty little wrestler kid from a few towns over who shows up uninvited to the tournament. No one’s heard of him, no one’s ever cut him any slack, and he can’t fi_gure out why people are making such a big deal of the fact that he just cleaned house. That’s just what he does—always has. Elvis is the dirty little wrestler kid and the one dog ever to make me question my own moral compass, even if just for a second.

Tucked into Lawyer’s Canyon along the Clearwater River in the northcentral stem of Idaho is a haven of outdoor diversity—Flying B Ranch. “The ranch consists of a little over 5,000 acres with quite a combination and range of habitat,” says Flying B Ranch General Manager Joseph Peterson. He adds, with modest understatement, “We have a variety of outdoor opportunities here.”

You’ll be offered big-game hunting, fishing for Idaho’s renowned Clearwater River A-run and B-run steelhead, and even a chance to book a helicopter ride to survey the landscape. But Peterson mentions the food plots, riparian habitat, creek bottoms, benches, basalt rimrock canyons, and canyons that border the farm grounds—all as habitat for gamebirds including pheasants, Hungarian partridge, valley quail, chukar, and ruffed grouse. “In the terrain change, there’s a lot of habitat change. We have a challenge for every level of physical ability and shooting ability,” Peterson says.

The valley quail are in the brush, Huns are around food plots and canyon rims, pheasants are about everywhere, chukar are in the rugged and rocky county, and ruffed grouse are found primarily on the southern side of the canyon.

“I’d heard about Flying B Ranch for what seems like the last 15 or 20 years. Acquaintances would come back raving about it, but I just wasn’t convinced. My friend Gil Morgan and I hopped on a plane and fl_ew to Bozeman, Montana, and then drove the windy highway to meet Covey Rise colleagues to see what this place was all about. The next four days gave me an extreme attitude adjustment about Flying B Ranch,” says photographer Terry Allen.

As a pioneering wildlife biologist, eloquent spokesman for the ethic of land management, insightful ecologist, best-selling author—in various editions, A Sand County Almanac has sold more than two million copies—and practical lover of the land, Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) has had no peer in infl_uence on the development of modern conservation practice and philosophy. What is often overlooked, however, is that an important and integral reason for his love of the land involved hunting. He recognized and appreciated the primitive, atavistic impulses that are the beat of the hunter’s heart and reckoned that “the man who does not like to see, hunt, photograph, or otherwise outwit birds or animals is not normal.” Today, that keen interest in the quest of the hunt and in the occasional conquest—elements at the center of Leopold’s outlook—is too often overlooked.